Project BrainLive®
Connecting families living with dementia
In 2020, the Elderly Fund partnered with The University of Hong Kong (“HKU”) to implement Project BrainLive® (“BrainLive”), a 2-year project that mainly aims to develop a best practice model of barrier-free online dementia community support service, while training young-olds as “BrainLive Hosts” to deliver evidence-based intervention and care service for families living with mild to moderate dementia via Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Tools.
The specific goals of the project are:
1) to ensure access to evidence-based intervention and care under infection control situations;
2) to prepare families living with dementia and service providers for future remote service development by enhancing their ICT literacy in the post-pandemic era;
3) to build capacity of the community to care for families living with dementia by developing young-old volunteers for remote dementia service;
4) to promote innovations by NGOs to explore full potentials of ICT-enriched service for continued service, including involvement of carers in the long-term; and
5) to identify using service data the best combination of the standard service package and other infrastructure and support for an optimised model to recommend in Hong Kong.
The first phase BrainLive was led by Dr. Gloria Wong, Honorary Associate Professor of the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at HKU. The project trained 60 BrainLive Hosts and provided service to 180 families living with dementia. Five NGOs collaborated with HKU to promote and implement the project. The project had completed in 2023.
Given the successful experience, the Elderly Fund continued to collaborate with HKU, together with Christian Family Service Centre, Yang Memorial Methodist Social Service and Hong Kong Young Women’s Christian Association, to implement the Project “BrainLive Connect” for two years (2025–2027). It aims to train more young-olds to provide evidence-based Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (“CST”) for people with dementia and to develop a volunteer-led service model to build the community’s capacity to support families affected by dementia. The project is expected to train 90 volunteers and benefit 260 people with dementia.
“BrainLive Connect” will focus on offline, face-to-face CST and will introduce three different adaptation approaches: an “Exercise-Enhanced” version, a “Daily Living” version, and a “Home–Community” version that combines in-person and online delivery. The Project will develop service models that better meet the needs of the elderly in Hong Kong. On the other hand, to motivate volunteers’ continued participation, the Project will introduce a time-banking mechanism which allows volunteers to accumulate “time credits” through volunteering service and use them to exchange for personal development training and leisure activities, etc.
“BrainLive Connect” is now led by Prof. Terry LUM, Professor, Department of Social Work and Social Administration, HKU and Prof. Shiyu LU, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Work and Social Administration, HKU.
Funding amount: $15,390,000
To learn more about BrainLive and its latest news, please visit the project website and FaceBook page.
